STOCKHOLM // Ikea is being criticised for deleting images of women from the Saudi Arabian version of its furniture catalogue.
Comparing the Swedish and Saudi versions of the catalogue, free newspaper Metro yesterday showed that women had been airbrushed out of otherwise identical pictures showcasing the company's home furnishings.
The report raised questions in Sweden about Ikea's commitment to gender equality, and the company released a statement expressing "regret" over the issue.
"We should have reacted and realised that excluding women from the Saudi version of the catalogue is in conflict with the Ikea Group values," the company said.
Women appear only infrequently in Saudi-run advertising, mostly on Saudi-owned TV channels that show women's bodies and hair covered. Imported magazines are also censored.
Ikea's Saudi Arabia catalogue, which is also available online, looks the same as other editions of the publication, except for the absence of women.
One picture shows a family apparently getting ready for bed, with a young boy brushing his teeth in the bathroom. However, a pajama-clad woman standing next to the boy is missing from the Saudi version.
Another picture of a five women dining has been removed altogether in the Saudi edition.
Swedish equality minister Nyamko Sabuni noted that Ikea is a private company that makes its own decisions, but added that it also projects an image of Sweden around the world.
"For Ikea to remove an important part of Sweden's image and an important part of its values in a country that more than any other needs to know about Ikea's principles and values - that's completely wrong," said Mr Sabuni.
Ikea Group, one of the many branches in the company's complicated corporate structure, said it had produced the catalogue for a Saudi franchisee outside the group.
"We are now reviewing our routines to safeguard a correct content presentation from a values point-of-view in the different versions of the Ikea catalogue worldwide," it said.
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1998: Amazon acquires IMDb, its first major acquisition. It also starts selling CDs and DVDs
2000: Amazon Marketplace opens, allowing people to sell items on the website
2002: Amazon forms what would become Amazon Web Services, opening the Amazon.com platform to all developers. The cloud unit would follow in 2006
2003: Amazon turns in an annual profit of $75 million, the first time it ended a year in the black
2005: Amazon Prime is introduced, its first-ever subscription service that offered US customers free two-day shipping for $79 a year
2006: Amazon Unbox is unveiled, the company's video service that would later morph into Amazon Instant Video and, ultimately, Amazon Video
2007: Amazon's first hardware product, the Kindle e-reader, is introduced; the Fire TV and Fire Phone would come in 2014. Grocery service Amazon Fresh is also started
2009: Amazon introduces Amazon Basics, its in-house label for a variety of products
2010: The foundations for Amazon Studios were laid. Its first original streaming content debuted in 2013
2011: The Amazon Appstore for Google's Android is launched. It is still unavailable on Apple's iOS
2014: The Amazon Echo is launched, a speaker that acts as a personal digital assistant powered by Alexa
2017: Amazon acquires Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, its biggest acquisition
2018: Amazon's market cap briefly crosses the $1 trillion mark, making it, at the time, only the third company to achieve that milestone
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